DELAWARE NOTEBOOK

By Celia Cohen
Grapevine Political Writer

"Delaware Notebook" is a collection of noteworthy
items around the state. This edition takes a look at
Littleton Mitchell, the great civil rights leader, as
well as the Independence Day parade in Hockessin and a
memorable observation of Legislative Hall in Dover.

Littleton Mitchell, whose life lasted from Jim Crow
to Barack Obama, was a civil rights warrior.

He came from courage, the son of a woman who did not
cower but defiantly stowed a shotgun at her door during
the Milford riots over school integration in 1954.

He bore the injustice of being prohibited from
getting into a pool to teach swimming to white students
without losing his dignity.

He shrugged off verbal and gun threats, although he
did call the state police when he thought a package in
the mail might be a bomb. It turned out to be silverware
polish he forgot he had ordered.

Mitchell never gave up the cause.

"People who stop never want to be treated equally.
People who stop don't have respect for themselves," he
was quoted as saying in A History of African
Americans in Delaware and Maryland's Eastern Shore.

Mitchell, who died Monday at 90 in a car accident
near Delaware City, was the president of the Delaware
NAACP from 1961 to 1991, a 30-year span that put him in
the vanguard of the movement for voting rights, public
accommodations, open housing and simple respect.

He was a lifelong athlete, a small, proud man, devoted to Jane, his late
wife who was his partner in the movement. Despite all the
drive he embodied and the orneriness he tapped for
energy, he gloried in the fun of living.

One of Mitchell's favorite stories was about a sit-in
planned for a restaurant in Odessa. Two demonstrators
were sent to integrate it. They were so sure they would
not be served that they ate their supper beforehand.

"They looked at the menu, and both of them selected
the biggest thing on there, steaks. And they got served.
And they couldn't eat it. Oh, how we ever laughed! They
could not eat it! They brought it home!" Mitchell said.

Decades later, Mitchell was still laughing about it.
Until the end, he was tickled by life.

# # #

The Independence Day parade in Hockessin brought a
change to the unofficial motto of politicians.

Usually it is, "Where's mine?" For the parade it
became, "Here's yours!"

Minor giveaways were distributed to the crowd. Mike
Castle, the Republican congressman, had volunteers
handing out little U.S. flags, the only catch being the
green "I Like Mike" stickers attached to them.

Other politicians tossed out handfuls of candy. The
moment was fleeting, however. By the time Tom Wagner,
the Republican state auditor, reached the end of the
parade, he theatrically upended an empty bucket that
once held his stash of sweets.

Wagner quipped, "Like the state, I'm out of candy."

# # #

Except for the ghosts at Woodburn, the governor's
house in Dover, there is rarely anything supernatural
associated with the state government. Inhuman perhaps,
but not supernatural.

When something inexplicable does happen, it turns
memorable.

There was, for example, an occurrence four years ago
during a committee hearing on embryonic stem cell
research in the state House of Representatives. It was a
very heated and emotional session, as one side argued
the research could save life and the other side argued
it destroyed life.

Suddenly a glass top covering one of the desks
shattered like a solid-state version of spontaneous
combustion. The nearest person was a step or two away.

It was so startling and strange, the hearing had to
be halted temporarily -- and not just because of the
cleanup. People were spooked.

It got even stranger as they realized the desk used
to be assigned to state Rep. Bobby Quillen, a Harrington
Republican who died the year before from cancer, one of
the diseases under study in stem cell research.

"Bobby Quillen did that," state Rep. Debbie Hudson, a
Greenville Republican, said at the time.

Recently there was another occurrence to ponder. It
was June 24, the day the General Assembly finally
approved gay rights legislation, 10 years of wrenching
debate after it was proposed.

Debbie Gottschalk, a lawyer who drafted the original
bill, went to Legislative Hall with her partner and
their eight-year-old son for the proceedings. They
watched the Senate vote, but he was too tired by 8 p.m.
for them to stay for the House.

They left but stopped at a drive-in on U.S. 13 for
something to eat before the ride home. Their son spied a
rainbow, the symbol of gay pride.

"A rainbow [was] rising out of a field and spreading
across Route 13 in the direction of Leg Hall," said
Gottschalk, who used her cell phone to photograph it in
a picture available by
clicking here.